1 Loren: {walking through a NASA facility} I'll be piloting the ship. Your job will be to go outside and plant the nuclear explosive on the asteroid.
2 Ishmael: I can be the backup pilot too!
3 Loren: It's a state-of-the-art experimental deep space transport capsule with manual feedback systems and specialised controls. There's no way you can fly it.
4 Ishmael: Do you know how many hours I've logged on Wing Commander?

Wing Commander is a popular video game series of space ship combat. Probably really good training for NASA piloting missions, I reckon.

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2019-11-23 Rerun commentary: "Give me manual control!" always seems to be a phrase fraught with danger and excitement. For some reason flying a spacecraft manually is usually represented as a last resort, risky move.

I guess it's because the pilots all think they can do cool moves like in a video game.